Healthy Eating as Power and Responsibility

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All this means that the power to improve your health is in your hands (and mouths). Some consider this a burden, but Prenovate’s team loves the opportunity it presents. Think about it. Of all the exposures that make our everyday lives harder (rush hour traffic, pollution, awful-but-addictive reality TV), a major one that we have individual control over is what we eat.

Eating and drinking the right things is a superpower of sorts, granting: the opportunity to live higher quality lives, to reach our health goals, to be more active with our families and to cut medical costs. It's true that some environments have more healthy food options than others. Still, when it comes to our diets, we can all choose to be better. At Prenovate, we're here to help.

Food has a complex relationship with our bodies. This means that there are several variables and combinations that can have different effects for different people. Understanding these complexities can be downright exhausting. For example, while excessive amounts of nutrients like sugar, saturated fat or sodium can increase our risk of certain conditions (weight gain, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.), vitamins and minerals like vitamin E and potassium can lower those risks if eaten in sufficient quantities. To complicate matters, the definitions of “excessive” and “sufficient” are different for every person. They vary according to individual characteristics like gender, age, physical activity level, and chronic conditions. Add food preferences and access to the equation, and it’s a major challenge to weigh all the information needed to make healthy eating decision.

Here’s where technology like software can be helpful. It can keep track of loads of information we can’t remember, can crunch numbers faster than our brains are able to, and deliver unbiased feedback on our performance. Our Food Grading Engine (FGE) does just this to help take the mental legwork out of your eating decisions. With FGE, we go beyond mere weight loss and calories to deliver a level of depth that other “apps” lack. With customized food grades, FGE gives detailed feedback on how an unlimited number of foods and beverages could impact the health goals of people with dozens of combinations of chronic conditions and goals. Of course, as we mentioned earlier, FGE is based on scientific evidence supported by leading organizations like the USDA, WHO and American Heart Association.

Sneak Peek

There are so many ways to leverage this technology. So far, we’ve used the FGE behind the scenes to power our Personal Nutrition Program, which tracks an individual’s eating habits, delivers in-depth personal feedback on them and assigns a health coach to help improve them. We’ve gotten a great response to the program, and now our members are asking to use the FGE themselves! We’ve taken that suggestion to heart, and we’re working to make the FGE publicly available so that everyone can benefit from it.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll share more details on how the FGE works and some examples of the FGE in action. Meanwhile, let us know what you think and leave a comment below.

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